


Mirrored Glass

by fatiguedfern



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Asphyxiation, F/F, Introspection, Spoilers, Supernatural Elements, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 12:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13547340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatiguedfern/pseuds/fatiguedfern
Summary: Shirogane reflects.





	Mirrored Glass

**Author's Note:**

> alright so... a ghost AU... of sorts.

Shirogane scrubs between her fingers, the last of blood that hadn’t truly splattered onto her hands washing away down the drain in a gurgling stream of murky white water and soapy foam. 

The game had smoothly slipped into action with a trial sure to etch itself into _DanganRonpa_ history as one of the more memorable firsts. The 43rd season’s theme cheerfully sifts through her teeth as she hums in self-satisfaction. 

“Not bad at all,” Shirogane murmurs between breathy notes whilst drying her hands on the crumpled hand towel hung over the basin. 

She straightens her skirt, fingers smoothing over the lightly webbed creases threaded across the pleated cloth. Her eyes catch on her reflection, gaze peeling at the well tailored ridges of her hand-sewn uniform. 

Some might find it wasteful to have put so much effort into a costume crafted to be overlooked, yet she studies each neatly crossed off stitches with a sense of dulled pride. She brushes her fingers across her palms. Pinprick calluses scratch against the soft tissue. 

She recalls late nights spent labouring over cloths near identical to the next - stitching together designs so marginally different from the previous that to an untrained eye it’d appear as a perfect replica. To the untrained eye, her efforts were needless. She runs her thumb across a particularly hardened patch of raised skin at the the tip of her index finger. 

The untrained eye is blind to her world. Only when all’s been said and done and the brightest of flares had been lit would they see. Only when this season’s reality came to a spectacular finish would their - and by extent, her own - bloodlust be sated, or at the very least, momentarily so. 

And when that end comes, when her life’s snuffed by a fittingly dramatic execution suited to Enoshima Junko’s 53rd legacy, she’s certain her world would be bared to even the most unexposed viewer. Her work would come to fruition, and her name would be splintered into viewers’ memories as one of the most cunning masterminds yet.

“You look pleased with yourself,” a soft lilt skirts across the shell of her ear, sound almost ghosting across her neck as it slips away. 

Shirogane’s body jerks involuntarily. She frowns. Had they installed a hidden mic in her dorm room without informing her? With _Team DanganRonpa_ handling most communications with the utmost caution, she can’t help but think that it would be considered to carry too high a risk of being heard on the off chance that she’d find herself entertaining visitors. 

She retraces the source of the sound to the wall she’s still stood facing. With unsteady fingers she picks at the grate covering the wide, dark drain hole. 

“I don’t know exactly what you’re doing, Shirogane-san, but if you’re looking for me; I didn’t slip in through the drain.” The voice is uncharacteristically cold, but the melody still rings in her ears familiarly. It leaves no doubt in her mind; the inkling she had to who its owner may be blooming into a fully developed thought. 

“Akamatsu-san?” Shirogane says, her tone leaving the mess of lumped syllables somewhere between a question and a statement. 

A cool flutter brushes passed her shoulder, as if someone’s unseen elbow gently bumps into her in passing. “Mhm,” presumably, Akamatsu breathes mere centimetres from her neck, if the huff of cold air is anything to base assumptions off of. “It’s odd, don’t you think? That I don’t even know why I’m here, or anything beyond knowing that I should be - am - dead, and attached to your general presence. And it’s even odder that I’m attached to someone I didn’t have any connection with you beyond valuing you as one of my treasured friends in these awful circumstances. So, why? Why you? Why not Saihara-kun, who I ended up passing the baton to? Do we have unfinished business?” Shirogane feels the skin of her neck prickle as Akamatsu’s rises, “Why? Can you think of a reason, Shirogane-san?” 

Shirogane can’t fully process the bite in Akamatsu’s disembodied voice. She hadn’t written her like this, not this rough, and certainly not with the capability of suspecting her so quickly. She hadn’t written her to have her spirit supposedly attach itself to her, either, though. She supposes the entire experience isn’t something to be scripted. She frowns. Akamatsu’s appearance defies the very world she’d crafted itself. 

“I-I don’t know either. How would I… W-wait, if you’re here, and d-dead, does that mean I’m talking to a ghost?!” Shirogane punctuates her panicked ramble with a short, yet piercing screech. It’s believable, she’s certain, because surely if one of them seemed to slipping out of character, she would have to compensate. 

“My last wish… It was for everyone to work together… Escape together.” Shirogane can’t help but glance around her, eyes lingering on the door, pupils blown as a deer caught in a sharp tide of sweeping flood lights. She’s scared, and not entirely sure why. This malfunction of sorts will go unrecorded, and she doubts that Akamatsu could do anything to physically harm her. Yet, her heart still clenches as she sees a reflection of Akamatsu - head peeking over Shirogane’s own shoulder - through her peripheral vision in the small mirror situated above the basin. “But my last ambition had been to stop the mastermind - and the killing game in turn. Saihara-kun… said that there’d never been a mastermind amongst us. That he was wrong… I don’t believe him. Not when he couldn’t believe that himself. I didn’t in those last few minutes before I was dragged, and I don’t now. The mastermind remained planted firmly in my thoughts, until I took my last breath - until they stole it. They’re still there, even if I don’t have a head to keep my thoughts. They’re still roaring in my thoughts,” Shirogane can almost see a raging amethyst bleed back into Akamatsu’s palid reflection’s glassy, greyscale eyes as her static ridden voice crackles angrily. “And you’re here, Shirogane-san.”

“Wh-what’s that supposed to mean?” _Unrecorded._ “You’re the only murderer here, anyway.”

“You’re the mastermind,” Akamatsu says, the blueish rope burns cutting across her otherwise near transparent form’s neck seemingly tensing as her voice grinds out tersely - strangled. A hint of underlying doubt’s present beneath the bluntness and uncut distrust. “You killed me.”

_Unseen_ “Did I?” Shirogane asks, almost coyly.

“I wish that you hadn’t. I wish that I didn’t have to suspect my friends, even in death.”

“Well,” Shirogane begins. _Unscripted_. “I wouldn’t worry about that too much, since we were never friends to begin with, Akamatsu-san.”

There’s still a flash of hurt painted across Akamatsu’s reflected features, despite everything. “You really are the mastermind,” she chokes, all momentary indifference lost. It doesn’t really matter though, Shirogane supposes. Akamatsu had already choked on non-existent air once before in the very game Shirogane continued to direct.

_Break_ “The one and only.” Shirogane’s face and voice melts into Enoshima Junko’s for a finger count of seconds, and Shirogane Tsumugi’s character shatters 5 chapters too early.

And then Akamatsu’s intangible hands are wrapping around her neck. Squeezing, squeezing, trembling. Slender, pretty fingers threaten to bite into her skin, mar her neck with blotches of black and blue surely reflected level with her own. Her skin remains unblemished.

“I’ll-I’ll kill you,” Akamatsu gasps. Her limp hands slip down the slope of Shirogane’s neck, falling down to her shoulders. “I’ll kill you. I’ll save everyone.”

It doesn’t fully register when Shirogane grabs a nearby bottle of hand soap, crashing it into the mirror with as much force as she could muster. _Break._ Glass shatters, and Akamatsu slips down the drain along with the memory of not truly coloured bruises. 

Shirogane washes off the blood prickling from the glass splinter embedded under her thumb. The last of the spattered droplets wash down the drain in a gurgling stream of soapy foam dotted red. 

She curls up in bed, prized uniform still sticking to her sweaty shoulders. And she sleeps sound, for when she wakes up, her thumb would be healed, her mirror whole, and the glitch fully erased.


End file.
